“MS and Your Feelings” – book blog discussion

On the last blog posting of every month this year, we’ve been taking one chapter of a book and reviewing it together. Today, we move to Chapter Three, “Feeling Numb? Awakening Your Inner Life.”

It was a distinct pleasure for me to spend this past weekend with Allison Shadday and her husband Sven Haaroff. Allison is the author of our current title: “MS and Your Feelings.” We were at a couples retreat sponsored by our local chapter of the National MS Society and had a wonderful chance to “workshop” several aspects of this chapter (by happenstance rather than design).

It was quite refreshing to consider that the expert who wrote this text works on these concepts every day, just like we do. And that, along with her supportive spouse, she gets back on the bike and falls off now and again, just like the rest of us.

One of the things I took away from the weekend in reviewing this chapter was how we are going to go through these steps over and over again in the course of our disease.

Unlike many diseases, we’ll have to grieve a sense of loss, time and again with MS. Every time something new happens or goes away, there will be a process of adjustment, and I plan on having this book on my reference shelf within easy reach for a long, long time.

This idea of feeling “numb” really stuck to me (and this is emotionally of which we’re speaking). I’ve noted from time to time, here on this blog and at several other opportunities, that multiple sclerosis was something I got my head around long before I got my heart around it. I guess I was feeling emotionally out of touch like the person Allison uses as a study, Niki.

One thing I attached myself to, almost as if I were this Niki, was the disclaimer.

How many times have I tried (and very successfully in my opinion) to assure others that I was still the strong, capable, coping, well-adjusted person they knew pre-MS? How many times have I flipped a comment to a heartfelt inquiry to my health? How oft have I tacked on to a description of your MS, “But others have it much worse,” just like Niki?

The other thing in this chapter that leads me down the holistic path of self-realization had to do with emotional hibernation. I once heard it said that emotions are like a tied-off, water-filled balloon; they don’t disappear, they just move into another part of us.

The idea of suppressing emotion (knowingly or unknowingly) will, indeed rear its head in other places in our lives.

We lash out at those closest to us, lose sleep, feel ill, lose hair, feel depressed. All of these things can be manifestations of the “stuff” we are not allowing ourselves to experience about our MS.

I mean, come on. When my left side feels particularly weak, my right side picks up the slack. Within days of such episodes, my right side is sore and stiff from the extra work. This is a physical expression of what happens to our mental side. If we don’t let it show itself one way, it’s going to find another.

Here is where high school physics comes to mind. One of the laws we were taught early in life was: Nature abhors a vacuum. This means that things will go from an area of greater concentration to one of lesser. It’s the old “weakest link” theory.

Those emotions we suppress as we allow ourselves (or force ourselves) to feel numb will find the path of least resistance and pop up somewhere else in our life. The problem lies in that they can pick up other baggage along the way.

Just like other chapters in this book, there is an exercise to be completed. I encourage all to use these as a way to check in with yourself. I intend to go back and review, not only the text but these questionnaires as well. It might be like looking at old school work years down the line.

Who knows what insight I’ll laugh at and which tools I will have forgotten that I have.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Trevis Gleason

Trevis L. Gleason is an award-winning blogger, food journalist, and published author. His most recent book, Chef Interrupted, tells the story of his diagnosis with secondary-progressive multiple sclerosis, in...read more

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